


How I Miss Your Ranting, Do You Miss My All Time Lows?

by penguinparity



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Illustrated, M/M, Photoshop, is a terrible thing to waste my life in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:16:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penguinparity/pseuds/penguinparity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Eames read it through he discovered everything he'd missed.  There in a neat, organized list was everything Arthur had ever refused to say to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How I Miss Your Ranting, Do You Miss My All Time Lows?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written on the kinkmeme for the prompt: Arthur has a journal that he keeps and the last few pages have been filled with things about Eames. He takes it everywhere with him just in case. One day, Eames is being noisy and finds it and now has to act like he hasn't read the diary, but keeps slipping up.
> 
> Title is from the Metric song, Combat Baby.
> 
> Terminally unfinished for quite some time now. Posting it over here in the hopes that maybe I can shame myself into finishing this. Public shame, it works wonders.

When Eames arrived at the loft apartment he found Arthur and Cobb already laid out, hooked up to the PASIV. Dom had told Eames over the phone that the research for this particular job was going to be complicated so they’re here a month early.

Eames dropped his briefcase next to the island that marked the border between the open kitchen and the living room where his two teammates were dreaming. He wasn’t normally inclined to carry his information so publicly collected and easily stolen, but he’d been posing as a junior associate at a business firm as part of the research. The briefcase was already full of notes on the man he was planning on forging.

He snagged a cup and saucer off the dish rack and paused to pour himself a coffee from the small coffee maker sitting on the counter. Taking a sip, he was pleased to discover the dark roast was still quite fresh.

Dom was sprawled over the threadbare couch, his arm dangling out to leave the tubes from the PASIV trailing across towards the small table. Across from him, Arthur was neatly laid back in a horrid looking orange and yellow print chaise. The only sign of disarray on his body was the rolled up sleeve and unbuttoned suit jacket falling open.

Eames walked over slowly, although he knew neither man would likely wake from his being noisy. He stared down fondly at their point man, recalling the last time he’d seen Arthur as they’d all trailed out of LAX some three months previous. Arthur had been different during the Fisher job, coiled and tense with Eames in a way he’d never been previous. Eames was observant by nature, something that made him excellent at his various jobs, so it hadn’t escaped him that Arthur’s tension had been mostly around him and Cobb. Cobb he’d understood, particularly when the issue of Mal had finally exploded in all of their faces.

He glanced down and noted the time remaining on the PASIV device, over 11 minutes left. He figured the two of them must be back to running through one of their grueling training sessions again. Next to the device, an old looking map of Sydney lay unfolded on the rest of the table’s surface. There were a couple of faded coffee stains on the corner of the map already. Eames chuckled to himself fondly when he noticed the detail, remembering just how uncoordinated Arthur could be before he’d had his morning cuppa.

Looking towards Arthur again, Eames’s gaze caught on the edge of a small notebook sticking out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He knew the younger man carried around a notebook that he was constantly scribbling in; taking notes on their decisions in meetings and organizing his research. It hadn’t escaped Eames’s notice that Arthur often carried around two different notebooks but for the life of him he’d never been able to determine the purpose of the second one. He’d tried spying; he’d tried lifting out of Arthur’s jacket. But the man seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to Eames and he’d never spied the contents.

Eames knew he shouldn’t, but when had that ever stopped him? Eames had lived his life by many scruples and rules, but caution is not one he follows particularly well. If it was the research notebook, he had a plausible excuse and could quickly catch himself up on Arthur’s most recent research. If it wasn’t, well. Eames never did know how to play fair.

Checking the timer again, now 10 minutes left, Eames leaned down and slid the notebook out of Arthur’s jacket. He knew he’d hit the jackpot the moment he felt the notebook’s weight and saw the slightly worn edges of the pages. Arthur always broke out a new one for reach job, destroying it once the job was over.

Eames gently eased several photographs stuffed into the inside pocket out. His eyebrows raised in surprise when he recognized the first of two Polaroids taped together. It was after their job in Valencia, when they’d escaped to Barcelona for a day via the train up the coast before fleeing the country. Their extractor Nekane had gone north, intending to disappear among her many relations in Basque country. The two of them had been verging on deliriously drunk by the time Eames had snapped that picture.

Making their way slowly up Rambla de Catalunya, from café to café, they’d been enjoying the early summer evening. When Arthur had spotted the statue of the ridiculous giraffe, named Coqueta for her enticing pose, he’d burst out laughing. Eames had snapped a picture of the statue with the ridiculous Polaroid camera he’d stolen off a tourist earlier and slipped it into Arthur’s pocket once it’d dried.

“For your little scrapbook at home, darling. So that you can always remember this moment and smile like that again.” Eames could still remember his words clearly, if only for Arthur’s reaction to them. He’d flushed and looked even happier as Eames’s fingers trailed away from the pocket in the jacket, his dimples showing.

Eames was surprised Arthur still had the picture, let alone carried it around with him. He’d never mentioned the evening again, despite Eames’s deliberate attempts to bring it up on their next job. If the Polaroid had surprised Eames, the stack of pictures underneath was an even larger surprise. Paper clipped together, the top photo was of the two of them from one of their first jobs together. Mal had been a terror during that job in New York. She’d ‘discovered’ a love of photography between jobs and had been constantly underfoot, trying to snap pictures of everyone and everything. Eames couldn’t even remember the picture itself, only placing it by their clothes. Arthur had yet to adopt his severe adherence to suits on the job and Eames had not quite abandoned his own. Arthur had only started wearing suits after Mal had passed.

Swallowing the sudden lump in his throat at the painful association, Eames carefully placed the two sets of pictures on the table near his coffee and opened the journal itself. The book fell open easily to a well-creased point in the spine, where the elastic band was holding part of the pages down. Eames started to scan the page before stopping and starting again from the top of the page. Any delight he’d had at the prospect of teasing Arthur died as an uneasy weight settled in the pit of his stomach. Pulling out his phone, Eames dropped the journal onto the table next to the photographs and snapped a picture.

Eames considered the list as he sipped at his cooling drink. The journal was tucked back into Arthur’s jacket, along with the photos that filled Eames with a tumultuous milieu of emotions. He’d skimmed through the rest of the journal; it looked like a mix between a diary and a series of lists.

As he’d looked through the entries, his skin had begun to crawl with a pervasive sense of unease and disgust. Not towards what he’d read in the journal, but towards himself. Eames was normally quite adept at suppressing that creeping sense of shame that came with invading someone’s personal privacy and their secrets. It was a very necessary skill in their line of work. This though, seemed to go beyond the pale. In part maybe because it was about him. A lot perhaps because the knowledge gained about Arthur represented a hollow victory.

Eames had been finessing his friendship with Arthur for years to push for more intimate information. Each disclosure from Arthur had represented a dearly won secret. So this glut of information was not the penultimate victory that Eames had fantasized it to be.

The rest of the diary wasn’t nearly as revealing as at the list of things Arthur felt he couldn’t say. Each dated entry started with a list of “I am” statements, followed by Arthur’s goals for the day. To Eames’s surprise they were not nearly as job oriented as he’d expected. The entry for today had been:

Eames had recognized the pencil sketch in the bottom right corner almost immediately, to his surprise. It was a relatively accurate rendition of a bridge near vineyard in Lucca, Italy. They had been hired several years previous to extract the exact mixture of grapes the winemaker had used to create his wine that catapulted his family’s vineyard from a regional wine to a Tre Bicchieri award winner the following year. Eames remembered the job fondly; they’d managed to get the owner (and themselves) quite drunk before putting him under. It was then they’d discovered that alcohol made for very rainy dreams.

The list of affirmations at the top of the page was quite troubling to Eames. He’d never considered Arthur to be a man with self-esteem problems and he was in the business of figuring out people’s most hidden secrets. Yet this list, it suggested someone who felt the need to affirm their own self-worth and control in their life. The picture tucked under the elastic made Eames smile, he could only assume it was another picture taken by Mal, given the beginnings of a beard that Arthur was sporting in the picture. He looked so carefree in the photo, younger and unburdened by what was to come.

The third item on Arthur’s goals for the day had been unsettling for Eames. Despite their history of mutual flirting, it suggested that Arthur felt he was shit at expressing honest emotions. The list at the end of the journal had seemed to confirm this growing suspicion in Eames’s mind.

Before Eames had a chance to start pondering the rest of what he’d seen in the journal, he was distracted by the warning beep of the PASIV device. The timer on the display started counting down from thirty seconds, indicating he had a few short moments to collect his thoughts before Arthur and Dom woke back up. Eames put his phone away and got up to refill his coffee cup, seeking distance in lieu of more time.

Arthur woke first, blinking quickly before removing the IV from his wrist. He spotted Eames on the other side the room and smiled. When Cobb awoke moments later, Arthur’s grin turned almost exultant. 

“Oh ho,” Eames huffed with a slight smile over the rim of his coffee. “I see the grin; did you finally manage to solve one of his mazes?”

Arthur’s gaze was instantly refocused back on Eames, evaluating him. Eames kicked himself mentally after a second, realizing he would have no reasonable way of knowing what they’d been doing had he not been reading Arthur’s journal.

“I assume that is what you two lunatics are doing, dreaming away on this beautiful morning. Some kind of ridiculous training exercise again, no?” Eames hurried to explain, striving to sound nonchalant.

“Yes, I’m quite impressed,” Cobb said with a wry smile. “He managed to figure out my maze within 15 minutes. It was supposed to have taken at least an hour. So he had me rebuild another one a second level down and we did it again.”

Eames went cold with the realization that they could have easily woken up earlier than the timer had predicted. More than likely while he’d been pawing though Arthur’s possessions like a petty pickpocket.

“So tell me more about the job,” Eames suggested. He saw the contemplative look on Arthur’s face and realized he needed to move the topic onto something else before Arthur had the opportunity to ask.

Arthur nodded and got up from the chaise and pulled out his notebook. For a split second, Eames was worried Arthur had figured out Eames’ slip and was going to push the issue. Then he noted the difference in color between the notebook he’d rifled through and the one Arthur was now holding. This one must be the one Arthur used for the job.

“The mark is Colton Milner, as you know,” Arthur recited from his notes. “He’s the head of a pretty successful self-help franchise that focuses on teaching people to actualize their inner aspirations. Pretty standard fare for a self-help guru. We’ve been hired by one of his main competitors, Jonas Turner, to uncover any dirty secrets he might be hiding that can be used to discredit him.”

“So, explain to me why you’ve had me infiltrating my way into the PR firm that represents our client’s franchise,” Eames asked after a moment as he parsed the information.

“Because Colton Milner doesn’t have any close associates. He doesn’t trust anyone,” Cobb jumped in to explain. “All of his employees are just that, merely employees.”

“When we started chatting up some of the lower echelons of the corporate hierarchy some interesting details started filtering out,” Arthur threw in. He tucked his notebook away and crossed over to the kitchen. Before he could continue, his phone started ringing. Eames watched in fascination at the nearly physical change that came over Arthur when he pulled out his phone and saw who was calling.

“Excuse me, I have to take this, it’s my mother,” Arthur said, walking towards the door to the adjacent room. Eames nearly had to bite his tongue not to remind Arthur not to weasel out of another family Thanksgiving. He might have been able to explain the first slip up with the mazes, knowing about Arthur’s desire to avoid his family would not be so easy to explain away.

“I’m still confused, why does this mean I’m infiltrating the company of the people who hired us?” Eames asked Cobb after Arthur exited the room.

“It’s pretty simple, actually,” Dom replied with a grim smile. “Milner’s employees are convinced he’s about to engage in some industrial espionage against our client. He’s going to seek out someone in one of Jonas Turner’s companies to try and turn against him.”

“I see now,” Eames replied delightedly. “You want me to be the perfect mark for our mark. He goes looking for someone to turn double agent. I become the poster child of disgruntled employee to bring into the folds of his confidence.”

“Exactly.” Cobb nodded as he squinted towards the closed door Arthur had disappeared behind.

\--

The problem with posing as a potentially disgruntled employee waiting to be turned double agent, as Eames quickly discovered was that it meant spending a lot of time in the offices of Molson Image Inc and actually pretending to half-ass a job as an executive assistant. He had to do his job well enough that his continued presence wasn’t questioned. At the same time he had to send out feelers suggesting discontent beyond the company that would be visible to Milner, such as sending his CV to companies he knew Milner’s franchise controlled or did business with.

In reality, it left him with a lot of time sitting in the offices of Molson Image Inc, pretending to do work (his productivity couldn’t be too high) and largely fucking around on his phone. Eames found himself spending a lot of time contemplating the picture he’d taken of the list he’d found in Arthur’s journal.

The list was obviously linear, it was something Arthur had started at least a few years previous. The most easily datable entry was number #10, concerning his brother. That had happened nearly two years previous, which suggested the list was more than likely nearly as old as their acquaintance.

The first item on the list that Eames considered at length was #21. It caught his eye every time he looked at the picture because it looked blank. He wondered what had been so honest and intense that Arthur had been unable to even commit it to paper within the confines of a private journal. Whatever it was, Arthur had spent some time pondering it, the lead from the pencil noting the number had begun to smudge. During lulls of activity, Eames let himself imagine Arthur frowning softly down at his notebook in contemplation, thumb idly sweeping back and forth over the twenty one.

Eames knew better than that though. By his sixth dreary afternoon stuck in a cubicle, he let himself consider what it was that Arthur had invisibly branded there, visible only to his own memory: 

_I love you_. Eames snorted, unlikely.  
 _You complete me_. Eames mentally rolled his eyes at himself for the bad pop culture reference. The other executive assistant, Janice, who idolized the women in bad romcoms, was clearly starting to get to him.

It obviously wasn’t lust related, as #7, 9, 19, and 20 suggested that Arthur had no problem expressing that on paper. It wasn’t frustration or annoyance, Arthur certainly had no issue with telling that to him personally. It had to be something that made Arthur feel so vulnerable he wanted no record of it.

Try as he might, Eames couldn’t place the context of the comment though. They’d worked the job in Idaho together (#18-20) over a year ago, when Cobb had been MIA trying to fix his wife. He hadn’t seen much of either of them after the funeral, until Cobb had shown up in Mombasa with an offer to do the impossible.

“Oh uh, did somebody cancel on you?”

Eames looked up from his phone to find Janice perched over his desk, staring fondly down at him.

“Pardon?” he asked, quickly clicking his phone off.

“Miles,” Janice said, addressing him by the name he’d been going by. “The only time I see that expression on someone’s face is when the person they love bails on them.” Eames blanched at the implication.

“Janice,” he started.

“Miles. Please, I’ve seen _The Proposal_ enough times to know that look,” Janice informed him in a slightly bored tone of voice. She fixed him with a pointed look.

\--

Eames had rented a small studio as part of his cover. One that suggested he was alone and unattached to his life, professionally as well as personally. A key element of being a good mark for someone like Milner looking to turn a spy was to look every bit the dissatisfied man of means who’d take the risk of ruining his career. He never went out with his new colleagues for drinks and went straight home or to a bar by himself after work. All told, it made for an incredibly boring cover.

Eames knew that getting their mark to approach him would give them an in they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. Yet lying in wait had always been one of Eames’ least favorite activities. Worst, the things he traditionally turned to for distraction were largely unavailable. He couldn’t go scaring up a good game of poker in a smoky, ill-lit back room. Nor was it easy for him to just pop on over to where Arthur and Dom were working in order to annoy and tease his favorite pointman.

It certainly wasn’t like the job they’d done in Coeur d’Alene the year previous. Like virtually everyone else in the dreamsharing business, Eames had been fully aware of the mythos surrounding the origins of their industry. That someone had stolen a version of the PASIV device from US military researchers and developed it for civilian and commercial purposes. He’d also realized quite quickly that the man who’d hired them for the job in Idaho had either been military, or as Eames came to suspect as their job had progressed, was _still_ military. The more he’d thought about it, he supposed it wasn’t all that surprising that the military was now hiring independent contractors to do their dreamsharing dirty work.

The job had seemed straight forward enough at the outset. They’d been hired to go into one of the few large cities in the panhandle of northern Idaho and extract some kind of plans from a community organizer. The team had been Arthur, their extractor Marcus (Cobb had been on a mysterious hiatus, trying to fix his wife as they’d discovered later), Nash and himself. Eames knew that Arthur had scrambled to find both an extractor and architect to replace Cobb, as someone who played dual roles was surprisingly rare in their business. It was the first time they’d worked with Nash, but he’d seemed competent enough.

What Eames hadn’t accounted for, and Arthur hadn’t bothered to inform him about, was just how bitterly cold it was in northern Idaho in the middle of January. They’d been snowed in at their vacant store-front, without heat, the day after they’d arrived. The cold had been easy enough to fix, Eames had taken to wearing a motley assortment of winter clothing he’d found at the local Walmart. What he’d struggled to deal with was just how dry the air was, despite the two foot snow drifts, and how crank it had made him. The frustration had been easy to deal with, Eames had taken to pestering Arthur almost constantly as they’d been prepping. It was only after he’d noticed Arthur staring at his lips that he’d wondered if the man had some kind of oral fixation. So he’d bought some lip balm, the kind in a jar you applied with your fingers, just to give him an excuse to constantly fondle and touch his lips.

Of course, now Eames knew that Arthur had been distracted by him licking his lips. If only he’d known that then he might have responded more seriously when Arthur had told him to find better things to do with his tongue. The memory still made him smile, even if the thought of Idaho made him cold. Fucking white supremacists and military contracts to investigate them.

As Eames finished his dinner, sitting in his tiny studio with the solitary silence pressing down on him, he considered his options. He could watch some telly and then go to bed, just like a good little mark. Or he could go bother Arthur.

With a grin, Eames tossed the takeout container of his dinner in the trash and headed out towards the nearest pharmacy to find some lip balm.


End file.
